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"Chavalo"

This is the dorm where I slept. This is my home today. I can spend the night here and I can be safe. We are in a safe place, we’re not sleeping out on the street or by the railroad. It is very difficult to be out on the street and on your own. Here at least you are with others and you are safe.

Well, we’re all Hondurans, we all met on the road so we became friends because we come from the same place. Who would have thought that we would be meeting all these people from Honduras? When you leave there, you leave thinking that you are going North, but you don’t know who you are going tomeet on the road, and you meet all these others from Guatemala, from Honduras, from Mexico…

Oh, it’s really the thieves and the gangs. That’s what we’re afraid of. It’s not so much the cold or the heat, it’s the crooks, the thieves… because we can fight against nature, but to fight against the crooks and thieves is a lot more difficult. You can find water for the desert, but you can’t really do much when you have a band of crooks that comes on you with guns.

So I’ve seen all the pictures and all the things you went through yesterday since we talked in the evening and this morning. So how do you feel? If you were doing a movie of your day, this day in your life, what do you feel?

So how do you feel about spending the night in this place that is not your home?

Well, once you’re finally there you’re okay, you relax because you’re safe, it’s in a safe place and nobody can hurt you. And then you can sleep, okay. The only thing is if you try to make noise or start a problem they kick you out.

Then this one is inside again and this building is a bit darker, but you can see the TV and here it’s really full because it’s a lot of people and almost all of us were already there. We can see, we watched TV from four o’clock when we get there to eight o’clock. Then at eight o’clock they take us to the dorms. Before that we cannot go to the dorms.